Leadership and Hope in Haiti: CLE
CLE / Angaje students visiting SOIL to learn about social enterprise and circular economy models
CLE
The Centre Haitien du Leadership et de l’Excellence (Haitian Centre for Leadership and Excellence, CLE) was born out of a vision to tackle Haiti’s leadership challenges, particularly in the wake of the devastating 2010 earthquake. Amid the efforts to rebuild the country, a glaring absence stood out—very few of those making key decisions were women, young people, or even Haitian. CLE’s founders recognized that true, lasting development couldn’t be imported; it had to come from within, led by Haitians themselves.
Before launching CLE, the founders immersed themselves in understanding the communities they wanted to serve. Max-Prosper Fortuna, now CLE’s Deputy Director, joined the team in 2016, fresh from university with a degree in Economics and Statistics. As an intern, he began by conducting community surveys, and what he found was inspiring: Haiti’s youth were ready for change, with many identifying entrepreneurship as the key to making a lasting impact.
Today, CLE continues to empower leaders across Haiti. Their programs serve mostly young women and men, but also local government officials, and civil society leaders, to help their visions of change succeed.
ANGAJE
Their central program is called ANGAJE, a social enterprise incubator through which every year, they support 100 impressive young leaders (65% women, 80% rural representation) working to scale innovative social enterprises through intensive training, coaching, consulting, and funding/financing. At the heart of all CLE initiatives is a commitment to strengthening the local economy and cultivating leadership across every sector. CLE’s long-term vision is simple but powerful: by building the capacity of Haitian leaders and spreading new models of leadership based on social change, collaboration, and Haiti’s own assets, they are creating a multi-generational solution to Haiti’s development challenges.
SOIL x CLE
Additionally, CLE works to improve the development sector in Haiti by offering organizational development consulting to a broad network of both Haitian and international partners, including SOIL. Over the years, CLE has been an invaluable partner to SOIL through these services, providing data-driven consultancy, leadership training for our staff, and playing a crucial role in shaping our organizational growth. Recently, CLE partnered with SOIL on a project with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), offering their expertise to verify data for this important collaboration.
SOIL has welcomed groups of students from CLE’s ANGAJE program to our Cap-Haitien office, giving them a tour of our facilities and learning about our business model. As the CLE team shares, “Whenever we need to showcase a successful social enterprise, we know we can always count on SOIL.”